


Ghost of Christmas Present

by DotsAndStripes



Category: Harry Styles - Fandom, One Direction (Band)
Genre: 1DFF, Christmas Fluff, F/M, Ghost!AU, Just a one shot I did, Slow Burn, because I'm obviously migrating things over
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-03
Updated: 2017-06-02
Packaged: 2018-11-08 08:44:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11078073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DotsAndStripes/pseuds/DotsAndStripes
Summary: Ynes intends to spend a perfectly quiet Christmas alone, as always. But there’s something strange about the early present she got from her mother–her antique dresser seems to have come with its own resident ghost, Harry.A holiday romance about spiked eggnog, loneliness and sharing a tiny apartment.





	1. Chapter 1

Ynes’ mother had always insisted on buying her Christmas presents with her exactly two weeks before. No matter she was now 24, this tradition lived on since had declared at 7 that she no longer believed in Santa. 

Of course, her mother believed that money was affection and spending any amount of time with her was also a suitable way of demonstrating she cared even if she spent the rest of her time in South America closing business deals and buying up small companies for fun. Quarterly shopping trips were when she could depend on seeing Mama. 

“I don’t know how you live here, Ynes. So cold and miserable.” Her mother sniffed her disapproval delicately while glancing out the taxi window. A frisson of annoyance ran up Ynes’ spine but she ignored it. It was only midday, she’d just picked up her mother a few hours ago and she already had the urge to tell the driver to take her back to Pearson airport.

Ynes had thought about making her take public transit for her own amusement but predictably her mother was wearing sky high Manolos and a black shift dress with a real fur vest thrown over top and no jacket.

“I don’t know why we can’t just go to Holt Renfrew and get you a more suitable wardrobe. Even if you’re an artist,” she said the word as though it was poison, “that doesn’t mean you cannot present yourself well.”

“Maybe if you came more often. Come next month Mama, I’ll go shopping with you.” 

Ynes said it impulsively, snatching onto a shimmering strand of hope. Maybe it was the holiday spirit (she had sat at home and drank eggnog last night while watching Christmas specials). Something about seeing all the tinsel, and snow might have warmed her heart a little.

“Oh no no no, sweetie. You know I can’t come back next month. That’s when Mama’s next merger is. Some other time.”

“Some other time,” Ynes repeated. So, never. 

They pulled up to an antique warehouse like store in North Toronto. Ynes had chosen it carefully. Well appointed and laid out, clean, mid-range prices but with a few things that might catch her mother’s eye. 

“It’s one of the best in North America. They collect and distribute worldwide. I had to call for an appointment.” Ynes laid on all the keywords to keep her placated before going on to look at vintage grandfather clocks and live edge farm tables larger than her living room. A writing desk caught her eye first, then a bone china tea set and a series of four poster bedframes.

To her left, in a corner she spotted a Victorian dresser in oak and mother of pearl doorknob. It was delicate, standing a bit away from any furniture and with nothing leaning on it. Heavy, Ynes could tell by grabbing the handle of a drawer, but just the perfect size for her apartment.

“We’ll take this one. Do you deliver? Excellent. Bring it tomorrow. She’ll also take the Tiffany lamp in the corner and the red and gold tea set.” Ynes’ mother snapped into action immediately credit card at the ready.

“Thank you,” Ynes said quietly. Feeling a little sheepish at the price tag, she let her mother dictate the rest of the day. First, a spa trip (‘hands like a fishwife, do you have to work in acrylics?’), then to find a dress and finally to dinner at a restaurant that served food that was more pretty than tasty. 

She was almost enjoying herself this week with Mama, going for hot chocolate in the Distillery District Christmas Market, showing her around the Royal Ontario Museum and even once, her mother had asked to see a painting she was working on and pronounced it would probably sell for a lot when she died, which was high praise in her book.

At five am on December 19th in the morning, Ynes awoke to shuffling in her bedroom where her mother slept. She was speaking in rapidfire Spanish on her cellphone and she sounded less than pleased although she couldn’t make out the words. Ynes went to the kitchen to start the kettle, but when her mother came out fully dressed in a skirt suit, she shut it off without preamble. 

“My darling, I have to go back to Quito. I know I promised I would stay for Christmas but I really can’t anymore.” 

Ynes’ heart was pounding in her chest so hard with the effort to hold back tears. Slipping behind a mask of calm, she looked up. Her mother looked stricken, yes, but she was also posed like a tableau, as if without the magic words she might turn around and go back to the bedroom. 

“It’s okay Mama. I’ll see you soon.” She let her mother kiss her forehead and make other promises she couldn’t keep before dashing out.

Ynes made a cup of tea and let a little sigh escape. She cursed herself for thinking for once they would spend Christmas together, when they hadn’t spent a holiday together since she was ten. It was always a meeting, or a crisis, or a factory fire or even once an invitation to Aspen with a boyfriend. Marisol Ortega, Forbes’ 2009 International Businesswoman to Watch was only Mama to her after all.

Ynes felt the emptiness of her apartment weigh on her more than ever before. She wanted to leave its silence, but couldn’t bear the hustle and bustle of holiday shoppers. None of her friends were around and she had already turned everyone who had invited her to their family Christmas. Not that she was getting that desperate, because being crammed another family’s Christmas was even more depressing than being alone. 

Often now, she’d hear a creak like someone was walking around while she painted but when she went to peek no one was there. It was an old building though, and pipes rattling and floors creaking were nothing new.

Even the clock ticking started to bother her so she took out the battery and let it lie face down on her kitchen counter. 

It was until she was painting in watercolour that afternoon that she caught a movement in the corner of her eye. As if a shadowy figure had tripped. 

She whipped her head around and for a second, a faint outline of someone appeared but when she focused and blinked it disappeared. Ynes shook her head once and hard. She went back to painting sunset skylines on canvas for a hotel order.

Shortly after decided to abandon her project for the day. Thinking she might even be coming down with the flu, Ynes spiked her eggnog and wrapped up in a blanket to watch It’s A Wonderful Life. She jerked awake at 1 am with the television still blaring with all the lights on. Her mug was on the table--she was happy she hadn’t spilled it on the carpet or herself. 

For some reason, her eyes were drawn to her open door. The light was dim but this time she could see the very faint but clear outline of a young man. He had tousled dark hair and the colour of his eyes were so flat as to be slate grey as if he’d been put through a black and white filter. Their eyes met, and he smiled. 

He seemed oblivious to the fact Ynes was wide eyed and panicked. She would scream but her voice seemed to have abandoned her entirely. She got up and turned suddenly and searched through her kitchen drawers for a container and throw salt at where he was standing. It went right through him and scattered on the laminate floor.

“Doesn’t work. I’m a ghost. Not a demon.” he offered nonchalantly. He was semi-opaque, blocking some of the streetlight spilling from the kitchen window but not enough to cast a shadow.

He was handsome. A bit too pretty for Ynes’ tastes, but not unlike the kind of boy she would pick up in the art student bar on a Thursday night a few years ago. Good bone structure. Her artist’s mind was already filling in shadows and recolouring his features by reflex. 

“Who are you?” Ynes demanded. She backed away from him slowly until she bumped into an open kitchen drawer. 

“Harry Styles.” He said. His voice sounded lovely, smooth and slow.

“Where did you come from?”

“I came with the dresser. It was mine you know.” Now Ynes was slightly calmer she puts together the British accent, and long hair with the frilly white collared shirt. 

“Why are you dressed like that? Are you some sort of Victorian ghost?” She asked.

He looked insulted and gestured down to his black skinny jeans with rips in the knees and shiny patent black oxfords. 

“No, I guess I just liked this outfit. Before.” He shrugged. He must not remember that much then. 

“Wait, are there demons? Do they exist?” She embarrassed that her voice creaked at the end and Ynes was ready to hide under the nearest church’s pews. 

“Not in this...not in this dimension, no. Haven't seen all of them yet though. Kinda new to being a ghost and all.” 

Ynes edged towards him, putting out a hand and he disappeared and reappeared behind her. 

“Ground rule: don’t touch me.”

“Okay...” Really Ynes could do that. “Why did you trip on my carpet earlier?” She had gone from being timid to being accusatory, jabbing her finger towards his chest as he stepped back halfway into her wall. 

“Still new to this ghost thing. I forgot I didn’t--that I couldn’t...”

He shrugged. And then Ynes remembered she must be utterly mad, talking to an apparition. It was probably a sign of strain she thought and if she were this lonely maybe she should be getting a cat. Really three of them if she was chattering along like this.

Showing herself to be her mother’s daughter, she prepared for bed as if there was not the ghost of a twenty something year old man perched on her dresser. She brushed her teeth and flossed too. Ynes washed her face and dabbed on an overnight mask. Harry spoke to her once or twice more but she found if she wasn’t concentrating she could dismiss him as movement in the corner of her eye like before.


	2. Chapter 2

She tossed and turned that night, dreaming of forgetting who she was. Being trapped and rendered in colourless detail on someone else’s canvas. 

Ynes shook herself awake as the first rays of sunlight creeped around her ill-fitting curtain. In the daytime it was easy to pretend that she had drank a little too much rum and maybe she was overtired. She thought of taking her mother up on her promise and going to Jamaica for holiday. 

As she sat up, Harry appeared slowly, perched on the oak dresser. 

“Sorry.”

He didn't say for what and she filled in the blanks. Sorry I'm here. Sorry it's not a dream. Sorry I wish I had something to say. After all, Ynes knows nothing about ghosts except for half remembered childhood stories from her nanny and Ghostbusters. Ynes nodded then spoke, her voice gravelly with sleep. 

“Ground rule: stay in the living room until I’m awake.”

“Got it.” And vanished through the door without a backward glance. She sighed. 

When she’s ready for a cup of tea, she came through her bedroom door and addressed him directly. He was peering at one of her paintings that was too outside her normal work to sell--a stormy sea in bruising purples and sapphire blues. 

“My name is Ynes.”

“I didn’t mean to frighten you, Ynes.” In his mouth, he rounded out her name and softened the consonants to something more musical. She nodded.

“You didn’t frighten me.” She was lying and they both knew it. 

“It’s been kind of lonely. No one noticed me but a few pets, other ghosts, your neighbour’s baby and you.”

She weighed this carefully.

“I guess you can spend some time here, but I need to paint.”

“It’s almost Christmas and you’ve got nothing up,” he murmured.

She ignored him. Harry watched her from the corner of the second bedroom Ynes had converted into a studio. Drop cloth lined the floor and he shuffled quietly leaning against a radiator. In one corner she had piled all her paints and easels but most of the room was bare with an area set out for painting. 

Ynes tested that the canvas she had stretched two days prior, making sure the tension was still even. She checked the gesso she made (she hated storebought gesso) and coated this raw canvas, then another and another. Then she reached for ones that had been primed previously, staining them faintly in a blush of blue so faint it looks like watercolour. 

“It’s a bird.” Ynes started at the words cutting across the silence after a few hours. There’s wonder in his voice, like she’s performed some sort of magic he had never quite seen before.

He spent the next two days popping in and out of her studio as she painted. Sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the evening and rarely speaking to her. She got used to him there, observing.

It’s with curiosity, she broke the silence on the day before Christmas eve to ask him a question.

“Harry?”

“Ynes.”

“How did you die?” Her voice wavered on the question, unsure. She doesn’t know him all that well, but she has spent all this time with him.

“Why are you spending Christmas alone?” Harry asked, quiet and even. 

“Point taken. Sorry. ” He disappeared without another word, only to reappear when she’s painting again, an hour later. Harry doesn’t seem upset so much as confused. 

She tried again that evening with more spiked eggnog to fortify her. 

“Can you, like, move things?” She cringed at the sound of her voice, high pitched while he sat a comfortable distance from her the couch. 

“I’ve never tried.” He flicked his finger and nothing moved. Knitting his brows together he tried again and a pencil slowly rolled off her makeshift coffee table which was really a vintage trunk with a tablecloth on. 

“Try again.” Ynes is surprised by how eager she sounded. 

“If you put up some tinsel or something. Decorate.” 

She was about to protest but she heard the unspoken I would if I could.

“Fine.” 

They spent an hour with him moving increasingly more heavy objects while Ynes observed, clapping with delight. Something about seeing side tables and her old couch float made her feel like magic might be real. 

“You look faint,” Ynes said. For the first time, his edges didn’t seem as sharp--he looked more of a watercolour than a sketch and fainter grey.

“Just need to rest. I’ll be back here when you have the decorations.” 

Ynes felt a pang of something like guilt before hurrying off to a local store whipping out the credit card her mom had given her for “frivolous things a young lady needs.” She came back with armfuls of silly things--fake holly, shiny foil wrapping paper, dancing santa window decals and a tiny fake tree that had lights that flashed in time to Feliz Navidad.

Harry seemed to fill the room, dashing from one bag to another and pointing out things. 

“Set up the tree next to the television where there’s a plug. Do you have presents?” 

Ynes shook her head and he scoffed.

“You’ve got to have presents. Wrap your books and put it under the tree. Mum would do that to make sure we didn’t know what was under there.” 

He smiled fondly at the memory.

“What else would your mom do?”

“She’d make all of these cookies. Sugar cookies, gingerbread, chocolate chip, cranberry. Dad would sneak a bunch for Christmas breakfast and Mum would get mad when she realized but he already had a tummy ache by the time she caught him.” 

“That sounds...sweet. ” Ynes replied wistfully. “How much do you remember?”

“It’s like cupping water in your hands. If I concentrate, I can hardly remember my own name but if I hear certain words or names, I know for example, I had a sister.” 

This revelation was laid between them for a few seconds before he spoke again. 

“What did you do when you were young?”

“We always went to midnight mass even if we didn’t go to the rest of novena. Papa would wake me and Mama up with loud music on his record player. They owned a small variety store then and for Christmas I was allowed to pick one thing from the store I really wanted. Later, it was watching movies with my nanny Tia Xiomara while my mom was at work.”

He leaned forward entirely engrossed in her explanations of the pasillo and moving from Guápulo to La Florestal. 

“You must have grown up speaking Spanish but you...” 

Ynes smiled, but not as happily as she had while reminiscing.

“I don’t have an accent. My mom made sure I would speak like an American. She wanted me to have the kind of opportunities she never did growing up in Loja. She invested the money after my father died and got a second degree in investment banking and business. I took English, French, Cantonese, violin, tennis and horseback riding.” 

“Sounds like a lot.”

Ynes shrugged wordlessly. They sat for a few moments in silence across from each other before she pretended to yawn and moved towards her room.

“Good night, Harry.”

“Good night, Ynes.”

By mere accident, she brushed past him and they both froze because at least for Ynes it is like lightning had struck, hot and electric down her spine and through her fingertips. But somehow, pleasant like every good memory she had ever had has happened at once. It felt intimate. So, of course, Ynes scrambled to her room and shut the door.


	3. Chapter 3

Harry didn’t appear at all on Christmas eve and Ynes was a mixture of worried, annoyed and relieved. She really didn’t want to talk about whatever that touch was, but she hoped she hadn’t accidentally sent him away. 

On Christmas she was awakened by the unmistakeable sound of her record player blasting Ella Fitzgerald’s Christmas album. It was the only holiday album she owned. Forget about her earlier concern, she was ready to kill Harry. Again. 

“It’s Christmas!” 

“You know what it is? It is eight o'clock in the morning.” She grumbled at him. He was entirely unaffected. 

““I’ve figured it out. I’m the ghost of Christmas present.” He grinned easily. “Get it? Because I came with your Christmas present?” 

Ynes groaned while he laughed. Under the tree were a couple more poorly wrapped items from around the house. A teapot. Maybe a spatula. That was her kitchen chair peeking under shiny red wrapping paper. She laughed despite herself.

“I could try to make cookies if you want.” 

“Cookies?” For that smile alone she could have opened up a bakery. 

Ynes set to work mixing according ‘Recipes for the Lazy Chef’ a gift her mother's assistant had bought her when she went off to university. She hardly used the book and it was covered in a light feathering of dust. She knew how to make a cup of tea, veggie curry, toast and scrambled eggs. What else could she possibly need? 

“Is there shell in the batter?” Possibly. 

“No.” Ynes beat the batter a little harder than before. Surely any shell would disappear. 

“Did you use baking powder or baking soda?” He squinted at the cookbook. 

“It's just a pinch. Does it really matter?” She replied. 

“Did you just put cookies in a cold oven?” Harry shrieked. Ynes rolled her eyes. 

“What happened the day before yesterday?” She countered. 

Harry looked sheepish. 

“I asked another ghost. It happens.” He murmured. 

“What happens?” Ynes asked. 

He sat next to her on the couch careful not to brush her. 

“There are rules. I can't...say everything. But when you become a ghost, you're kind of in between.”

“In between?”

“Death and living. Where you've been and where you're supposed to. You've tied your...essence, your sense of self to an object usually but sometimes a place or person.” Harry shifted, thoughtful and staring at their feet. 

“You can tie yourself more permanently to here. Affecting your surroundings, making your presence known to the living and touching a person can all do that.” 

Ynes stared at him and he studiously avoided her gaze for the next few moments, tapping a finger to his lip. 

“So you came back?” He ignored her and leapt to his feet, brushing against her accidentally. The same warm electric feeling ran through her veins again. Ynes felt herself yearn to try it a third time despite his warning. 

“Why is smoke pouring out of your oven?”

A earsplitting fire alarm and all the windows thrown open as if it wasn't the winter later, it was under control. 

“You may as well throw those out,” he said. 

“I'm sure they are fine.” They are perhaps a little more burnt along the edges than is preferable for baked goods. It was some old grease drippings by the oven’s burner that had caught fire not the cookies. 

“Fine?” 

Ynes grabbed a cooler one and bit down. “Delicious.” 

She had to fight not to gag on their texture which was more cementlike than anything. The cookie itself tasted alright, mostly sugar with an eye watering pocket of salt in some parts. She took another bite. Harry’s expression of utter disgust was worth it. 

“Just admit that cookie is disgusting and you can stop eating it.” He pleaded. 

“I make great cookies. I am the cookie queen.” She grabbed another. That was definitely shell in that crunch. Harry gestured and flicked the cookie until it went skidding on her linoleum tiles. She reached for another and Harry overreached and this time grabbed onto her wrist. 

If the other touches had been electric, this was positively scorching. Ynes was sure that she could have struggled her way out but he was pinning her playfully against the kitchen counter. The look he gave her said don't move an inch. 

“I can't believe you ate those,” he said. 

Then in a slow gentle movement, he kissed her. She could just feel the mere whisper of warmth but it didn't seem to matter to her body that seemed to overheat immediately. 

“We can't do too much of this. Not good for you,” he murmured. Then stole another kiss, this one left a tingling down her spine and sweat plastering her curls on her forehead. 

“You could stay if you wanted,” she breathed as he let her go. “With me. If you didn't want to...go.”

“I think you already knew I did.” 

x 

“I'm with a private buyer who is very interested in your antique, Ms. Ortega.” The dealer followed her gaze to her small art studio in the apartment but their seemed to be nothing there. 

“I'm not selling my dresser. Don't waste my time.” 

“We would be doubling the value you bought it for. My client would also be happy to buy your painting and display it in one of his galleries.” 

The dealer thought he saw her smile a little but she straightened and looked at him dead in the eye. 

“No. I won't be selling it. It has sentimental value. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to paint.” He was hustled out of her small apartment without ceremony. 

“Can you believe it?” Ms Ortega said. Who was she speaking to? There had been no one in the apartment. All these artists were always a little...odd. He shook his head and went to his next appointment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you liked this, let me know maybe?


End file.
